


Modesty

by ectoBisexual



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Commission fic, Crack, Draco's gay, F/M, Nobody's white, Summer, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 05:36:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7605700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectoBisexual/pseuds/ectoBisexual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McGonagall has a secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Modesty

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to @iipylf for commissioning me. This was the best prompt I've gotten in a while and writing it brightened up my day; tell your friend they have the best headcanons. Enjoy!
> 
> I'm in a difficult financial spot right now. For anyone interested in commissioning me, my info is here: http://cloverguts.tumblr.com/post/129385688821/daynas-emergency-commissions-please-take-2

It shouldn't be legal for England to be this hot.

England isn't a hot country. That's just  a general rule of thumb. It's cold, and it's miserable, and it's charming, in that weird, overcast, muggy kind of way it has about itself. Harry has lived here his whole life and he's more than a little used to it. The worst it's gotten in the past few years as far as he's concerned is maybe a little above 30 Celcius, when they've had to hustle inside the halls of the school during break on their last days, soaking in the shade. But this? This is ridiculous.

It's, like, a week from Summer break, and he's actually looking forward to not being at school anymore.

"I can't do it anymore," Ron mumbles-- or at least, that's what Harry thinks he's said. His face is kind of pressed into the grass, limbs spread out everywhere like he's trying to sink into the earth to escape the heat. "It's hot inside. It's hot outside. It's hot in the dorm rooms. Where are we bloody meant to go?"

"Please," Hermione chastises, sending a little eye roll his way. There's no way he can see it with his head planted in the ground like that, but he seems to feel the reprimanding gesture anyway. "There are only five days left. And there is an air conditioner in the library, I believe..."

Ron lifts his head from the ground and tries his best to look despairing. "Hell if I'm sitting in a _library_ all day. Honestly."

He kind of looks like he's considering it, though.

Harry is meanwhile trying to focus on not _dying._ The sun feels like it's personally trying to start a fight with the back of his neck. He silently curses his dark hair for undoubtedly attracting more rays. Now is the only time during the school year, he figures, where it's acceptable to wear shorts everywhere, to roll up the sleeves of your shirt and ditch your blazer in favour of lying around the grassy hills outside and moaning. Such is the pain of going to a boarding school; you can't escape the heat, not really. He's nearly 18 years old, and he's still not allowed off of campus, not even for a bloody ice cream.

All five members of their group-- Harry himself, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and their latest addition to lunchtime hangouts, the ever-scowling afraid-of-the-sun white-as-the-snow Draco-- are hanging on for dear life for break to roll around. Break means sleeping over at each others' houses, blowing off homework, beaches, drinking. Break means pretending like they're not terrified of senior year at Hogwarts, which is just about the only boarding school in England that still enforces strict gender segregation despite being an apparently 'progressive' education program. Harry knows what that really means, and it probably has to do with the fact that they have maybe 4 or 5 white students in total enrolled. They also have some of the highest-ranking graduates of the last decade, but who's keeping track? He just wants to get out of here so he can go to college already.

"I wish we had a pool," Ginny mumbles, shifting her head on her arms. She's lying on her stomach, legs all stretched out and glowing golden-brown in the sunlight. She has a firm policy of wearing about a billion layers of sunscreen (afraid of skin cancer-- not that she'll burn, Harry always teases, since Draco's the only member of their group who turns a nice shade of tomato red every break) and even now he can smell it, that sickly-sweet Summery smell floating up from her skin. She smells like coconut and the beach; he realises, not for the first time, how badly he wishes they had a swimming pool.

"If we had a pool," Harry murmurs, "we'd have to see just about every professor not immune to the heat, and that includes Professor _Snape,_ with their clothes off. That's not a scenario I'd really like to imagine."

The group murmurs in assent. Hermione shudders a little.

As if on cue, the group all turn their head towards the current teacher patrolling the hills; no doubt on the lookout for juniors and seniors taking advantage of the heat to hide around campus and mack on each other. Frankly, the idea disgusts Harry, because although his girlfriend is a vision in the sunlight, there are about a million things he'd rather do that _don't_ involve getting stuck together by ten layers of sweat.

The teacher currently on patrol is Professor McGonagall, just as wrapped up in her twenty-pound robes as always.

"How can she _stand_ that?" Ron inquires, doing his best to look horrified. "She must be dying under that thing. And the material's _black,_ too."

"Come to think of it," Ginny pipes in, raising her head to get a proper look, "I don't think I've ever seen her out of those things."

Ron shakes his head at his sister in bewilderment. "She's like a nun."

"Maybe she has really fucked up scars," Draco supplies, still looking bored. He's got his nose buried in his phone like he usually does when he's trying to act too cool to hang out.

Harry snorts. "Wouldn't surprise me. I bet she could hold her own in a fight. She looks like a total spitfire; probably been in a million of them. That'd give anyone scars."

Draco's eyes darken and he shoots a wicked grin back at Harry. "War scars."

Ron's eyes widen. "You think she fought in Korea?"

Hermione snaps her textbook shut. "She's Chinese, you dunce."

Ron frowns like he's trying to figure out a way to make himself seem less stupid. "Oh. Well, maybe she fought for us, then. I could have meant that."

She scoffs delicately. "Likely. She's only been in the country twenty or so years. And she's a _teacher._ Besides." Hermione tosses her curls over one shoulder, even though they just bounce right back into place. "She wears so many layers because she's modest. She's a _lady._ "

"Yeah, like you," Ron teases, poking the exposed flesh on her thigh, and the two start play fighting. They're so in love; they've barely been dating a month, and Harry's already sick of it. Hermione finally comes to triumph, flattening her boyfriend-- who's giving her heart eyes, gross-- against the grass and sitting back up. Her grin only lasts a moment; she throws her hands in the air and lets out a groan.

"I'm so sick of the heat," she snaps, trying in vain to flatten her natural hair. "The humidity's no good; it's wild _enough._ "

"Maybe Draco will trade you," Harry offers, trying and failing not to grin his ass off at the answering beet-red scowl he gets in return.

As the group go silent, their eyes drift back to McGonagall. The question passes silently between them: why does she wear such covering clothes?

"Maybe she has a skin disease," Ginny offers, tilting her head wonderingly at their teacher, "and she can't be in direct sunlight, or she'll flare up."

"Maybe she's a _vampire._ "

"I just don't understand," Harry says, shaking his head, "how she can stand the heat. She's got to be sweating to death in that thing."

The group shut up as she stalks past, giving them a polite nod over her shoulder. Hermione whips her textbook back opens so it looks like she's studying. Everybody collectively holds, then lets out their breath when she passes.

"I'm telling you," Draco mutters, "there's something _sinister_ about hiding that much skin. No one's that precious about their modesty."

"She's old," Hermione snaps. "She probably just has a lot of traditional values. Leave her alone."

That effectively ends the conversation, and they go back to complaining about the heat.

.

Two weeks into Summer break, they all meet up for the first time, and decide to go to the beach.

It's still sweltering, especially on Britain's terms, and Harry's getting sick of couch-hopping between friends' houses, mooching off of their air conditioners. They roll up chattering excitedly about getting to go for a swim the first time since Summer started, GInny looking gorgeous in her bright blue bathing suit-- the colour standing out against her dark skin, complimenting her eyes. They walk hips bumping, with Harry's arm slung around her shoulders. The whole group is here; Luna couldn't come, and Neville's in Summer school, but they even managed to wrangle Draco along for the trip, though he promised he'd have a miserable time amongst all the gritty sand and slimy fish. They set up their towels and umbrella in what Harry concedes to be a perfect spot: right in the sunshine, metres from the waves, with enough soft sand around them to bury their toes or set up for sunbathing. It's _perfect._

"We should come back here for New Year's," Ron says proudly, ignoring the fact that January is the middle of the Winter and England weather is so bloody temperamental that it wouldn't be a surprise if the ocean was _frozen over_ by then. "Or we could just come back one of these nights. Bring beer and all that. Fireworks, I could get fireworks."

"I just want to get in the water," Hermione insists, looking ravenously out at the waves.

Harry's too wrapped up being a hypocrite-- sickly in love with his girlfriend, thinking about all the Summers he wants to spend with her after this one, blah blah blah. He's too distracted to make sunscreen dicks on Ron's back without him noticing, or even rag on Draco for being a creepy little recluse and scoping out cute boys from under the umbrella. He's so caught up in staring at Ginny, in fact, that he's the last one to notice the thing that changes all of their Summers combined.

Hermione is the first one to speak up. "Holy shit."

Her sentiment is pretty plain and obvious, but Harry stills finds himself looking at her quizzically, like, _what?_ Then he notices that the rest of the group is staring with her, their eye-line somewhere across the beach.

Reluctantly, Harry follows it. When he finally figures out who they're looking at, he doesn't understand. Sure, the sight takes him aback some. It's a woman, standing a few metres away from them by the water, _covered_ in tattoos. And he doesn't mean that she has one or two features on her lower back or arms, either; he means _covered._ From the backs of herr legs winding all the way up to the top of her neck, this chick is _covered._ And she's _old,_ too. Harry realises it a beat too late; she's fiercely wrinkled, the folds of her skin bending and warping the flames and dragons and skulls that take up the full expanse of her body. She turns, and at first all Harry can look at is the massive skull and roses she's got plastered across her stomach. Then, he thinks to look at her face.

"Is that-"

"Holy _shit,_ " Hermione repeats, a grin breaking out on her face.

"McGonagall!" Ron exclaims.

The old woman doesn't notice, and turns back towards the water. Harry watches as she takes a little running start and disappears into the water, her grey head bobbing along with the waves as she swims out towards the horizon. It's the most beautiful thing Harry has ever seen.

"I cannot believe," he starts to say.

Ginny starts cackling into his shoulder.

"Tattoos," Ron says disbelievingly, shaking his head. "It was bloody full-bodied tattoos."

"...No one at school is going to believe us when we get back and tell them this."

"Did you see the one of Dumbledore she had on her ass-cheek? That's friendship dedication, man. Harry, why won't you get my face tattooed on _your_ ass?"

"Skulls and flames," Hermione says, still shaking her head. "The woman has skulls and flames on her body. I thought she was just being _modest._ "

"At least we know why she covers it all up," Harry snarks.

"Um, _no_? I don't understand _at all_. If I had tattoos that badass, there's no way anyone could make me cover them up!" Ron gestures fervently at the waves, where their elusive teacher has disappeared. Harry wouldn't be surprised if she just went under and lived her life in the sea; he doesn't think he's ever seen anything weirder than their 75-year old Biology teacher _covered in tattoos,_ and he doubts he ever will again.

"I told you," Draco says dryly, "that no one's that precious about their modesty."

Harry stares after his old teacher, the waves enveloping the crowds of people trying to escape the heat.

At least they have the mystery solved. For now, there's a whole lot more of Summer ahead of them. Things could be weirder.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to @iipylf for commissioning me. This was the best prompt I've gotten in a while and writing it brightened up my day; tell your friend they have the best headcanons. Enjoy!
> 
> I'm in a difficult financial spot right now. For anyone interested in commissioning me, my info is here: http://cloverguts.tumblr.com/post/129385688821/daynas-emergency-commissions-please-take-2


End file.
